{"id":129,"date":"2017-08-23T13:18:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T13:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/?p=129"},"modified":"2017-08-23T13:18:37","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T13:18:37","slug":"addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing polypharmacy in older people"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"post-body-2064525477374569490\" class=\"post-body entry-content float-container\">\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>A major challenge in healthcare, particularly for older people, is that patients are ending up on many medicines, termed \u2018polypharmacy\u2019. Polypharmacy can be either \u2018appropriate\u2019 or \u2018problematic.\u2019 With the latter, prescribing professions are traditionally better at starting medicines than stopping them (for a variety of reasons), which means that patients are too often left with problematic polypharmacy that can lead to side effects, interactions, and an inability to manage to take them all.<\/p>\n<p>The NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care for Northwest London (CLAHRC NWL) have an active Medicines Optimisation work stream. A lot of work has been done around the need for medication review and stopping unnecessary medicines when problematic polypharmacy occurs. The term \u2018deprescribing\u2019 has emerged strongly in the literature and CLAHRC NWL have put together what we think is the first journal issue devoted to the topic of deprescribing.<\/p>\n<p>The themed issue is particularly noteworthy due to the international contributorship, including key thinkers on this topic from Australia, Ireland, Israel, and UK. Barry Jubraj, Honorary Pharmacist for Medicines Optimisation at CLAHRC NWL, co-edited this themed issue and the CLAHRC NWL team contributed to several papers, including outlining a strategy for educating students and junior clinicians about the need to undertake medication reviews. This is a novel piece of work covering an issue close to the working practice of healthcare professionals in Imperial and beyond; the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/ejhp.bmj.com\/content\/24\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">web version is currently available<\/a>\u00a0and the print version is forthcoming.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-sidebar\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A major challenge in healthcare, particularly for older people, is that patients are ending up on many medicines, termed \u2018polypharmacy\u2019. Polypharmacy can be either \u2018appropriate\u2019 or \u2018problematic.\u2019 With the latter, prescribing professions are traditionally better at starting medicines than stopping them (for a variety of reasons), which means that patients are too often left with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[404],"tags":[250573],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-polypharmacy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Addressing polypharmacy in older people - Medical Centre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Addressing polypharmacy in older people - Medical Centre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A major challenge in healthcare, particularly for older people, is that patients are ending up on many medicines, termed \u2018polypharmacy\u2019. Polypharmacy can be either \u2018appropriate\u2019 or \u2018problematic.\u2019 With the latter, prescribing professions are traditionally better at starting medicines than stopping them (for a variety of reasons), which means that patients are too often left with [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Medical Centre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-08-23T13:18:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Azeem Majeed\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Azeem Majeed\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Azeem Majeed\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/#\/schema\/person\/b22e0e53db849fda7de9e32c14d3df25\"},\"headline\":\"Addressing polypharmacy in older people\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-23T13:18:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\"},\"wordCount\":248,\"commentCount\":0,\"keywords\":[\"Polypharmacy\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Health\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\",\"name\":\"Addressing polypharmacy in older people - Medical Centre\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-08-23T13:18:37+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/#\/schema\/person\/b22e0e53db849fda7de9e32c14d3df25\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/2017\/08\/23\/addressing-polypharmacy-in-older-people\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Addressing polypharmacy in older people\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/\",\"name\":\"Medical Centre\",\"description\":\"Updates from Imperial College London&#039;s Professor of Primary Care\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.imperial.ac.uk\/medical-centre\/#\/schema\/person\/b22e0e53db849fda7de9e32c14d3df25\",\"name\":\"Azeem Majeed\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d2985c036ad0b1b454e88876b26c4c477be22a2218f7b5ce5e589d35efd30d78?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d2985c036ad0b1b454e88876b26c4c477be22a2218f7b5ce5e589d35efd30d78?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d2985c036ad0b1b454e88876b26c4c477be22a2218f7b5ce5e589d35efd30d78?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Azeem Majeed\"},\"description\":\"I am Professor of Primary Care and Public Health, and Head of the Department of Primary Care &amp; Public Health at Imperial College London. 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